


home by 7

by InkCaviness



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst, Future Fic, I'm Sorry, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-08
Updated: 2015-03-08
Packaged: 2018-03-16 20:52:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3502379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkCaviness/pseuds/InkCaviness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s been three weeks since you’ve last seen his face and the message still blinks up on your phone and for some reason you can’t stop staring at it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	home by 7

**Author's Note:**

> So i actually wrote something that's not a HP!AU?

_i’ll be home by 7_

It’s been three weeks since you’ve last seen his face and the message still blinks up on your phone and for some reason you can’t stop staring at it.

_i’ll be home by 7_

They’re the same words as every day, they’ve been the same words every day for almost two years now and somehow they still manage to excite you, somehow they still make you smile. And it is the same as every day, white plastic bags full of steaming take-out food sitting on the kitchen table and filling the apartment with a pleasant, warm smell. Your eyes dart to the clock, still 50 minutes left, and you can’t help but hope that they will pass fast because all you want is to see his face again. 

50 minutes and you decide to just look through some more paperwork, a silent smile still on your face because you know that in exactly 50 minutes you will see him again. It’s been almost six years since High School and somehow your chest still feels fuzzy whenever you see his smile.

30 minutes and your work is done, files stacked neatly on your desk, ready for you to take them to the office the next day. 

10 minutes and you start unpacking the food. In the background the bored voice of a news reporter blares out of the television and somewhere in the distance you think you can hear a siren howling through the night. 

The clock chimes seven and you can’t help but break into a giddy smile and expectantly wait for the door to open.

Seven o’clock rolls around, the seconds ticking by, and everything stays silent. It’s nothing, you tell yourself, it hasn’t even been five minutes. 

You start tapping your fingers on the table and idly scroll through your phone and the minutes pass slowly.

Maybe he cold held up in the office, you wonder. It wouldn’t be the first time, even though he normally sent you a text if he stayed longer but your phone stays silent. He’s probably just busy. 

Maybe he missed his train. Maybe he found a kitten in the rain and just had to rescue it. Maybe he decided to help some old woman carry her groceries home. Maybe, maybe, maybe, and the endless list of explanations keeps spinning in your head as the rain patters against the windows and blurs the lights together outside. 

Half an hour passes and leaves your stomach in knots as you tell yourself that you’re just being stupid, you’re just worrying too much, but you can’t get rid of the fear slowly settling into your bones, because he’s never late without telling you. 

Suddenly there is a change, something that makes you freeze, makes your fingers halt in their tapping. The voice on the TV is different, higher, faster, a panicked pitch that only seems to get louder as you slowly turn around and stare blindly at the woman rattling down the news. Your body freezes as the camera pans out and you see the wreck, parts of the train are hanging off the tracks and people hurry around, some injured, others trying to help.  
Your breath gets caught up in your throat and you feel like you should be crying but you aren’t. You just keep sitting there, one hand still tightly grasping your phone, the other now flat on the table and you forget how to circulate air through your lungs but everything seems pointless anyway.

Somehow your brain tries to convince itself that this can’t be real, that this just can’t be happening, not to you, not now. 

It does.  
It happens, it’s real and you wish you could cry but you can’t, not even when you meet his parents in the hospital and his mother sinks to her knees in the middle of the hallway and every one of her cries feels like another stab to your heart. 

The hospital is full of people that night, more crowded than any hospital should ever be and everywhere around people are holding onto each other, tears streaming down faces. Some have laughter bubbling out of their mouths as they embrace people they thought were lost forever and others scream out what’s left of their souls because all they get is comforting words from doctors with bloodstained hands. 

_i’ll be home by 7_

They try everything but in the end all they can do is say _We’re sorry_ and you will never forget the horrible emptiness as you see his pale face with tubes sticking out of his arms and a mask over his mouth because it all came too late, just a little too late.

The tears come later, when you’re alone, throwing pictures against the walls and screams rip out of your throat until you lose your voice and you’re reduced to tears spilling out of your eyes.   
You can’t look at the photographs littering the floor because his smile still shines out from the broken frames and shattered glass. Never again will that grin light up a room and never again will he smile quietly to himself.

Your phone keeps ringing until you can’t take it anymore and throw it across the room with an ear piercing scream. The ringing doesn’t stop even though the screen cracked straight down the middle and you pull your blanket over your head and cry yourself to sleep.

_i’ll be home by 7_

A week passes and you still wait for him every day.  
The curtains are drawn shut and you ignore the phone calls and knocks on your door because without him the apartment is empty and cold, the silence weighs down heavily on your shoulders. You can’t bring yourself to turn on the TV anymore.

The rain never stops and the streets are a steady stream of colourful umbrellas with blurred spots of light in the night. A day before the funeral you think you can’t go, somehow it just seems wrong. You want to see his face again, but not like that, not pale like the moon and too unmoving to ever be mistaken for a living human being.  
You still get out of bed that day, you still go through your routine, because that’s all that’s keeping you upright at the moment. Get up, get coffee, shower, get dressed, don’t go back to bed, don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.  
The flowers in your hands look miserable and you’re probably just making it worse with the way that you’re clutching them tightly to your chest but those small yellow dots in a grey world are your anchor that prevents you from floating away into the clouded skies. You never understood how people could say that the dead look like they’re sleeping because he just looks like a broken doll that someone threw out into the street. He looks too small, too frail, too cold. He never looked cold, he always shone like the brightest star in the night sky with twinkling eyes and a warm laugh. Now his hair is dull and flat, his eyes are closed and he looks so out of place in a suit that is almost too big for his frame, like a child playing pretend.

His mother hugs you and you wish you could make it all easier for her when she smiles at you with all the sadness in the world spilling out of her eyes. Your friends are there, friends that tried to call you for a week, friends that you’ve known forever, but now they stay silent, because they know that nothing they could say would make it better.  
It takes all your strength not to run away and for most of the ceremony you keep your eyes on the ground, but when it’s over your feet are as heavy as concrete and you can’t move. You stay rooted to the spot as everyone leaves. Some mutter comforting words and you feel a hand pat your shoulder but you don’t look up to see who it is.

His gravestone is white marble, smooth and cool and the rain runs down it’s sides. It is covered in flowers and your mouth quirks up in a small, helpless smile because he really would have liked all those colours if he could have seen them. A tear, or two, escape your eyes and mix with the rain that’s already soaking through your jacket and you finally turn away to go home.

You don’t think you can ever take the train again, so you walk all the way through the city to your apartment, keeping your head low and hands buried in your pockets. 

Another week passes and you don’t know how you will ever be able to take this silence. Everything reminds you of him, even after you packed away all his things in boxes that are now stacking up in the hallway. You can’t bring yourself to throw them away: his books, his clothes, his dumb little cat figurines and a snow globe with a crow in it. It would feel like letting go the last piece of his soul that you hold and you know you should try to move on but you can’t. It would be like ripping your own heart into even smaller shreds. 

You find an old Volleyball in the back of your closet, the one that your whole team had decided to sign the day of your graduation. Carefully you trace his name with your thumb before you put it in one of the boxes with his other things. 

_i’ll be home by 7_

You don’t know why you keep opening that message on your phone. Every time it feels like that night again and every time you wish you would just get a second chance, you wish he would get a second chance. You call his number for the third time and hang up before the generic voicemail message starts. 

_i’ll be home by 7_

_i’ll wait for you_

You throw your phone out of the window and turn away before it hits the sidewalk with a crack.

_i’ll be home by 7_

It takes you another week to find a storage place for his things, because you will never be able to throw them away. All you keep is the Volleyball and a picture of him that you hide in the drawer of your nightstand. 

Your heart is broken into a million pieces, but maybe one day you will be able to live with them. 

Not now, not next week, not next year, but maybe one day. 

You get a cat that curls up on your chest at night and licks your hand when you’re crying. She also scratches your arm when you try to pet her but you get along and the apartment doesn’t feel as empty anymore.

You meet his parents for dinner and you hug his mother back and you never talk to them about him and it’s fine that way because there is nothing you need to talk about.

You visit your old teammates and when someone mentions him you manage not to break down crying, instead you smile at the memories from high school.

You ride the train again, even though your hands are shaking the first few times; but somehow you manage. 

Life goes on and there will never be a single day that you don’t miss him but you keep going.

You keep going and live a life for two.

At 70 years old you return to your home.

Because home is not a place; home is where your heart is.

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone who finished this:   
> I'm sorry. I really, truly am.  
> You can come yell me for this on my tumblr, inkcaviness.tumblr.com

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Your name is ---](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3547487) by [kuro_shinji](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro_shinji/pseuds/kuro_shinji)




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